Why No Shootdown Order Issued During 9/11 Attacks?

The famous document authorizing shoot down of planes dated 1 June 2001. It's been said this was changed just before 9/11, in June, to give the Sec of Defense authority to order shoot down aircraft. Actually it was updated from 1997 and hardly anything changed from the 1997 order but this is an important document nontheless..........

"1. Purpose. This instruction provides guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects."

"NMCC is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(1) When notified that military escort aircraft are needed in
conjunction with an aircraft piracy (hijacking) emergency, the DDO, NMCC, will notify the appropriate unified command or USELEMNORAD to determine if suitable aircraft are available and forward the request to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(2) Pursuant to reference j, the escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator by direct contact with the NMCC."

"c. If destruction is required, the DDO, NMCC will, forward all
requests or proposals for DOD military assistance to the DOD Executive Secretary and appropriate OSD staff offices, and then to the Secretary of Defense for approval in accordance with DODD 3025.15, paragraph D.7 (reference d)."http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf

So the proper procedure was the FAA hijack coordinator would contact the NMCC who would contact NORAD/Military and get authorization for orders from the Sec of Defense.

But the hijack coordinator is in Puerto Rico, the NMCC officer in charge decides he has better things to do during the attacks, and the Sec of Defense has deserted his post.

"December 4, 2000: Special Forces Commander Appointed FAA Security Chief: US Army Lieutenant General Michael A. Canavan is appointed associate administrator for civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a position that includes being the “hijack coordinator".http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

"However, the hijack coordinator, FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security Director Mike Canavan, is in Puerto Rico and claims to have missed out on “everything that transpired that day.” The 9/11 Commission fails to ask him if he had delegated that task to anyone else while he was gone."http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

So the 9/11 attacks were an act of war? Well, the Secretary of Defense locked himself in his office and deserted his post then didn't he? No shoot down order, or any orders will be coming from that guy.

And the officer in charge of the NMCC?

"Major General Winfield served as the Deputy Director for Operations, J3, in the National Military Command Center, and was present as the General Officer-in-Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Major General Winfield was nominated for and earned a position as a Senior Military Fellow at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, a national membership organization and "think tank" headquartered in New York City."http://www.rotc.usaac.army.mil/command/MGWinfieldNew.htm

"Captain Charles Leidig, the deputy for Command Center operations at the NMCC, takes over temporarily from Brigadier General Montague Winfield and is effectively in charge of NMCC during the 9/11 crisis. Winfield had requested the previous day that Leidig stand in for him on September 11. Leidig remains in charge from a few minutes before the 9/11 crisis begins until about 10:30 a.m., after the last hijacked plane crashes. He presides over an important crisis response teleconference that has a very slow start, not even beginning until 9:39 a.m."http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=montague_winfield

Some questions for Gen M. Winfield from the 9/11 commission......

"1) To your knowledge, was the Secretary notified of the second crash? Did the NMCC receive any directions from the Secretary of the Vice Chairman before the hit at the Pentagon?"

So the FAA hijack coordinator, US Army Lieutenant General Michael A. Canavan, is in Puerto Rico. And apparently no one has replaced him. The NMCC officer in charge decides he has better things to do during the attacks, and the Sec of Defense has deserted his post. How unfortunate.

So how will the FAA and military respond with these major players in the chain of command absent? Well, it turns out we're not real sure. There were a lot of "false statements" being made. The "official story" changed after the 9/11 commission.

This from the 9/11 Commission Documents on Referral of False Statements by FAA and NORAD:

"During the course of our investigation, the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States discovered evidence that certain public statements made by NORAD and FAA officials at a Commission hearing on May 23, 2003, and elsewhere, regarding the actions of NORAD and FAA officials in responding to the 9/11 attacks were not accurate."

"Inaccurate Statement #1: The FAA notified the military at 9:16 that United 93 was hijacked."

"During the May 2003 hearing, Commissioner Lehman asked several questions about the path of the Langley fighters, which traveled directly east, over the ocean, and then north toward Baltimore, before heading west to Washington. Why, the Commissioner wanted to know, didn't the fighters head more directly to Washington, if they had been scrambled to respond to American 77, the plane that struck the Pentagon? Col. Marr addressed this question in his response to retired Col. Scott:"

"The answer on AA77 is not easy, nor is it pretty. At the time AA77 was occurring we were focused on UAL93 which was the only confirmed hijack that the FAA had identified to us. My records show UAL93 reported as hijacked at 0916L, once we found it and identified it's [sic] westerly heading, we scrambled Langley at 0924L just in case it turned around toward DC, which it did later. At 0924L we also received a call from the
FAA about AA77 with a follow-up call at 0925 L. It is easiest to explain the simultaneous scramble order with the AA77 notification as the scramble being against AA77 - it takes a lot of time to explain to the public that you're scrambling fighters against a plane heading away from the possible target."

"Col. Marr, in other words, attempted to explain the circuitous route of the Langley fighters in getting to Washington, D.C., by indicating that they were not in fact scrambled to respond to a report at 9:24 that American 77 was hijacked; they were scrambled in response to the earlier "report" that United 93 was hijacked. Thus, the reintroduction of the discredited 9:16 notification time enabled NORAD to explain to the Commission the odd route of the Langley fighters in reaching Washington."

"There were two fundamental problems with the explanation. First, as at least some in the military have known since the week of 9/11, it is inaccurate. The plane had not been hijacked at 9:16; the hijacking did not occur until 9:28 after the Langley fighters were ordered scrambled—and NEADS was not notified until after the plane had crashed. NORAD informed Commission staff at the close of Commission interviews at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs that it now accepts that notification did not occur until after the plane had crashed. Second, as we will now discuss, NEADS was not notified that American 77 was hijacked at 9:24."

"Inaccurate Statement #2: The FAA notified the military of the hijacking of American 77 at 9:24."

"What notification did occur at 9:24? The Mission Crew Commander's staff at NEADS maintains a handwritten contemporaneous log of information received and actions taken (known as the "MCC/T Log"). The 9/11 entry in the log at 9:24 records: "American Airlines #N334AA hijacked." This tail number refers not to American 77 but to American 11, the first hijacked aircraft that crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The subpoenaed tapes confirm that this time corresponds to NEADS's receipt of tail number information on American 11 and to reports that American 11 was still airborne and headed towards Washington, D.C."

"Inaccurate Statement #3: When the Langley fighters were scrambled, their objective was to respond to the reports at 9:16 that United 93 was hijacked and at 9:24 that American 77 was hijacked."

"The best evidence for both this inaccurate report and the resulting scramble is the subpoenaed NEADS tape, which records that at approximately 9:21, the Mission Crew Commander spoke the following to the Battle Cab (where the Battle Commander, Colonel Marr, was located):"

"Okay. American Airlines is still airborne, 11, the first guy. He's headed towards Washington, okay? I think we need to scramble Langley right now, and I'm going to - I'm going to take the fighters from Otis and try to chase this guy down if I can find him. Yeah. You sure? Okay. He's heading towards Langley, or I should say Washington. American 11, the original guy. He's still airborne ...."

"Inaccurate Statement #4: Officials were tracking United 93 and intended to intercept the aircraft if it approached Washington, D.C."

"On September 15, 2001, General Paul Weaver, overall commander of the Air National Guard which provided the fighters used to scramble Otis and Langley, told reporters that no fighters were scrambled or vectored to chase United 93: "There was no notification for us to launch airplanes. We weren't even close." That same day, however, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz stated in a television interview that Defense Department officials had been "following" United 93 and were prepared to shoot it down if it approached Washington, D.C."

"The FAA's standard operating procedures for notification of hijackings were disregarded on 9/11. The notifications that did occur, moreover, gave the military no realistic chance to intercept the aircraft, and were sometimes mistaken. NORAD scrambled the Langley fighters in the wrong direction against a nonexistent target. NORAD was, moreover, completely unaware of United 93—the fourth plane—as the flight was heading for Washington."

"The official USAF/NORAD account of 9/11, presented in testimony to the Commission, included in NORAD's official history, and apparently briefed and relied upon by the White House, was that NORAD scrambled its fighters from Langley AFB in order to respond to the hijacking of AA 77 (which hit the Pentagon), that they did not have time to intercept that aircraft, and that DOD subsequently tracked the approach of UA 93 toward Washington, but the aircraft crashed before action needed to be taken."

"The staff does not believe this account is true. Instead we have found, and are preparing to state publicly, that NORAD scrambled its fighters from Langley AFB in order to intercept an aircraft that no longer existed — AA 11 (which hit the WTC) — believing incorrectly that this aircraft might be headed toward Washington and sending fighters up the Eastern seaboard in order to meet AA 11. Further we have found that NORAD did not know about AA 77 until three minutes before it hit the Pentagon, and began diverting the already scrambled aircraft toward Washington against some target (which they did not know was AA 77) one minute before impact, much too late to make a difference. We have also found that NORAD was not tracking UA 93 and did not even know that aircraft had been hijacked until after it had crashed."

John Farmer, for one, doesn't buy it....
from his book:
"There are, in sum, significant reasons to doubt the reliability of both Inspectors General reports. Neither finds any evidence that the FAA and DoD coordinated their efforts after 9/11 to reconstruct the story. This conclusion is refuted by the e-mail from CONR to NEADS discussed above, which references the sharing of information, by the fact that NEADS provided its logs to the FAA, and by the fact that the agencies emerged on September 18 with identically erroneous notification times for American 77 and United 93." Page 286http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260588203&sr=1-1

I've served in two branches of the armed forces and I find it very hard to believe that the military would cover up for the FAA. In fact I would suspect that not only would they not cover for the FAA but would be outraged that their own headquarters (pentagon) was attacked due to the FAA not informing them in a timely manner. And yet they seemed to have made false statements and pretend the FAA did notify them. The only way (in my eyes)that the military would cover for anyone, would be to cover themselves.

"However, the hijack coordinator, FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security Director Mike Canavan, is in Puerto Rico and claims to have missed out on “everything that transpired that day.” The 9/11 Commission fails to ask him if he had delegated that task to anyone else while he was gone."http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan

So who was doing the "coordinating" between the FAA and military? The answer apparently lies in the statement of Acting Deputy Administrator of the FAA, Monte R. Belger.........

"The Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Va. was our primary source of information about aircraft locations and reports of other unusual situations. Military personnel were assigned to the Command Center on an on-going basis and they became involved in coordinating actions with the military." page 3http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/hearings/hearing12/belger_statement.pdf

Discussion of Flight 93:
From a tape transcript showing air traffic control actions on 9/11. Officials from the FAA Command Center East, Boston, New York, Washington and Cleveland air traffic control centers, the National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI and others are present on the call:

"MR.: And this is Cleveland Center. Who's up?
MR.: It is the Command Center with about five or six people listening.
MR.:Okay. Mr {inaudible} the chief, just asked if we have any military up or not? Are we pursuing that? We'd like to be able to track this guy so we know what's going on, especially when we lose a transponder.
MR,: We have been in contact with the military cell here in the building and they're working the issue. I'm not sure where they are with--"http://www.scribd.com/doc/13484922/911-Air-Traffic-Control-Transcript

It looks like the fault of the FAA not giving the military time to intercept these planes and according to the 9/11 commission not informing the military at all of two of the planes..possibly could be the fault, not with the FAA, but rather......

More on the military cells, in hindsight, the last sentence seems most interesting....

From released 9/11 commission records:
"Military/FAA Relationships: There is a natural tension between the two entities because both desire the use of the same airspace for different reasons. As a result of the inherent tension and differing protocols and languages, military cells have been established in FAA to work day-day air space management issues. The New England Region has one such cell, a cell that also provides support to the Eastern Region in New York. Staff held a short discussion with the senior Navy officer in the cell. The cell has 2-3 person contingents from each of the three services and each reports separately to a different boss. The Army and Navy representatives report to their General Staffs at Headquarters US Army and US Navy, respectively. The Air Force Cell reports to the Air Force Liaison Officer at FAA Headquarters. All of the assigned military personnel are either flight or controller-trained and each cell exits to handle administrative matters only. There is no reason that they could have or should have been contacted or interjected themselves in the process on 9/11. The senior Navy officer put in succinctly from a military perspective. There are defined lines of communication and procedures to handle events like that and if he or his other service counterparts had
gotten involved they would have just confounded the situation."http://www.scribd.com/doc/13883328/T8-B2-FAA-NY-Center-Bob-Jones-Fdr-Handwritten-Notes-Jones-MFR-and-Alt-MFR-Re-Boston-Visit

It would make more sense, that they would lie to cover themselves rather than the FAA. Besides, no shoot down order ever reached any pilot......

So the attacks were going to happen. It shouldn't have even reached this stage. Saudi Intelligence knew of these hijackers.......

"Speaking to the Arabic satellite network Al-Arabiya on Thursday, Bandar -- now Abdullah's national security adviser -- said Saudi intelligence was "actively following" most of the September 11, 2001, plotters "with precision."

"In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.
Close surveillance of Mr. Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Mr. Shehhi's roommate.
Asked whether American intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5

CIA Director G Tenet:
"We had at that point the level of detail needed to watchlist al-Mihdhar- that is, to nominate him to the State Department for refusal of entry into the U.S. or deny him another visa. Our officers remained focused on the surveillance operation and did not do so." page 4/27http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/911project/jci-midhar-hazmi.pdf

Coleen Rowley, former FBI agent and whistleblower, to CIA director G Tenet:
"You were also told that the FBI had arrested Moussaoui because of a visa overstay and that the CIA was working the case with the FBI. One of the documents given to you even had Bin Laden's picture on it! And the CIA held successive briefings about Moussaoui: August 27th, 2001, with the deputy director of operations; August 28th, 2001, with the executive director of the CIA; August 30, 2001 with the director of Central Intelligence; September 4th, with the executive director of the CIA; and September 10th, with the deputy director of operations."http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/how-will-you-look-yoursel_b_47897.html

These attacks were going to happen. It is an undisputed fact, that after the first plane hit the WTC no shoot down orders were given. That after the second plane hit the WTC no shoot down orders were given, that after the pentagon had been hit, no shoot down orders were given, only after the attacks were over was a shoot down order given.

Lots "false statements" being made, here's a few from National Security Advisor Rice in 2002.....

C Rice interview Aug 2002:
"Q: And did you have any hunch at that point that it might be terrorism?
DR. RICE: It just didn't come to mind immediately that it might be terrorism. We knew a lot about al Qaeda. We knew that al Qaeda really coveted an attack against American interests, maybe even against the United States. We had gone through a summer in which we had heightened states of alert abroad for our embassies and for our forces, because we were getting a lot of chatter in terrorist channels. But most of it was pointing all of it was pointing abroad, that there was going to be some kind of attack abroad. And the human mind doesn't always put two and two together very quickly, and so, no, in that first attack, it didn't come together for me. When the second plane hit, though, it came together very, very quickly."http://www.scribd.com/doc/16571537/T3-B11-EOP-Produced-Documents-Vol-III-Fdr-8602-Terry-MoranABC-Interview-of-Rice-003

A couple of months after this interview the report of the joint Inquiry by the House and Senate select committee on intelligence was released which made the following points....

"REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – BY THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE"

"Finding: During the spring and summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community experienced a significant increase in information indicating that Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida intended to strike against U.S. interests in the very near future."

"Finding: Beginning in 1998 and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received a modest, but relatively steady, stream of intelligence reporting that indicated the possibility of terrorist attacks within the United States."

"Finding: From at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons."

"Community received reporting in May 2001 that Bin Ladin supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States to conduct terrorist operations and, in late summer 2001, that an al-Qa’ida associate was considering mounting terrorist attacks within the United States."

No, she isn't being honest. Will she also "mislead" about a shootdown order?

"Q: At one point that morning, the President gave an order to the Combat Air Patrol pilots giving them permission to shoot down U.S. commercial airliners. How did that decision come about, and how did you take on board the gravity of that decision?"

there were numerous warning signs about Al Qaeda ambition to use planes as weapons in attacks on the US and about an actual operation in progress. Principals in the CIA and FBI obstructed efforts by lower level agents that might've disrupted the plot. The FAA/military had procedures in place to to coordinate on and deal with unauthorized flights over the U.S., including shooting down planes. During the time the 'hijackings' took place, these procedures weren't followed and key personnel were out of the loop. Afterward, NORAD presented various versions of events that contradicted each other and known facts. The 9/11 Commission Report presented still another version, and also omitted and obfuscated a great deal of other info related to the 9/11 events. No one was held accountable; the Commission attributed the numerous coincident collapses of US intelligence and defense to a failure of "imagination, policy, capabilities and management" (339), despite acknowledging, "The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols." (31)

Nice collection of links and quotes by jimd3100; it's amazing how much info there is in the official records that casts doubt on or blatantly contradicts the official 9/11 myth.